Michigan welding storefront to showcase metal art

By JEREMY ERVIN

Mar. 04, 2018

Tough Weld Fabrication opened their storefront in Marysville back in November 2017. It gives the business a relaxed space to show off its plasma cut metal art and signs.

Amanda and Charlie Penrod of Marysville own Tough Weld Fabrication and are looking to build it up into a larger shop someday. Charlie Penrod worked as a land surveyor before being laid off in the midst of the 2008 recession. He got a job at a fabricating shop. Once he started making things there, he decided it was what he wanted to do.

"My whole life I always thought that I needed to work with tools of some kind, but I was never interested in cars or anything," Charlie Penrod told The Times Herald . "I always felt like I should be creating something but I never really knew what it was."

Tough Weld Fabrication found a niche in creating decorative signs for businesses and individuals. They also provide a variety of industrial fabrication services in addition to art.

Amanda Penrod works with clients to develop their sign ideas. Sometimes a potential client has a very clear idea of what they want, other times they only have a general theme, she said. After getting a sense of what the client might want, Amanda Penrod will come up with three or four drafts that are sent to the client, refined and decided on.

"We just go back and forth until they say 'OK' because we won't cut anything until it's OK'd by them," Amanda Penrod said. "It takes a week and a half or two weeks from the initial first conversation until it's in their hands."

From there the sign is transferred into a computer cutting program, plasma cut, finished and painted.

Amanda Barnes of Kimball purchased a sign from Tough Weld Fabrication for a photography business.

"It's definitely great quality, I liked the paint job a lot," Barnes said.

Marc Anderson of Shelby Township used to work with Charlie Penrod at a fabricating shop in Chesterfield. He's purchased a few things from the business, including a decorative lighthouse, flower and a couple of wood and metal end tables, Anderson said.